Thursday, January 26, 2006

Empathy and civility - Republican style

While Mrs. Alito wept and the media covered it like it was news, we kept hearing how "uncivil" Democrats were. Oh, really?

How quickly they forget. What they're truly bemoaning is the spine we're finally showing against the encroaching fascism. If we don't roll over and play dead on every issue, we're suddenly labeled as uncivil .

Take a gander at some of these truly "civil" and enlightening comments prominent Republicans have made over the years:

"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for."- Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95

"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."- Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02

"Environmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat Party. I'm proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans."- Rep. Don Young (R-AK), Alaska Public Radio, 08-19-96

"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him."- Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton, as reported by journalist Steve Miner of KSUB radio who overheard his conversation, 11-01-98

"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs."- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95

"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed."- John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."- Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02

"Homosexuals want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers."- Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 01-18-95

"Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist."- Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), House Majority Whip, during a debate on increasing the minimum wage, Congressional Record, H3706, 04-23-96

"Probably nothing."- Jeb Bush, during his losing 1994 bid for Florida Governor, when asked what he would do for black people, quoted by Salon on 10-05-02

"The homosexual blitzkrieg has been better planned and executed than Hitler's."- Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-CA), The New Republic, 08-01-94

"When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in NaziGermany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together."- Pat Robertson again, The 700 Club, 01-21-93

"Quit looking at the symbols. Get out and get a job. Quit shooting each other. Quit having illegitimate babies."- State Rep. John Graham Altman (R-SC), addressing African-American concerns about the 'symbol' of the Confederate Flag, New York Times, 01-24-97

"Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men."- State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer,08-22-01

"My biggest fear is going to be going to the funeral of some young Iowa man or woman who dies in this conflict and having their mother or father come up to me and ask whether or not their son or daughter died for America, or died to save Bill Clinton's presidency. I don't know what I would say to those grieving parents. For that reason I believe the President must resign immediately."- Rep. Jim Nussle (R-IA), Congressional Record, H11963, 12-18-98

(Thanks to daria g for the quotes.)

Can anyone believe this body of people have the nerve to call anyone else uncivil?

It's gross intimidation tactics. With 60 percent of Americans against Iraq and Bush's approval rating hovering somewhere in the basement of 37 percent, the best they can do is smear everyone with the same broad, venomous brush. Peddle the politics of hate elsewhere. Even though you all are so very good at it, after nearly two decades, it's tiresome.